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The Google Cloaking Hypocrisy

I've been digesting this for awhile. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable writes that the New York Times is cloaking content in the interest of faciliating Google "to access, crawl, index and rank content that would require a username and password by a normal Web user."

This may sound OK to most, but I fail to see the fairness in this; and it implies that, like the BMW affair, Google is once-again proving that they provide preferential treatment to large companies. BMW.de was reincluded in what, a few days? Good luck, mom and pop, with getting that type of service from Google. Unless you confuse form letters with love letters, you won't be pleasantly surprised.

There is no doubt about it. What the New York Times is doing, without special Google accomodations, or at least their complicity, is a black hat technique according to Google for everyone else. Other search engines are less quick to villify cloaking, so long as it is not used to spam. I agree, but Google is in a pickle here.

What they do is detect the search engine bot and serve it the complete content instead of the abstract and a request to open your wallet. Then they set the "noarchive" option in the robots meta tag. This prevents savvy users from resorting to the cache. In this case, Google probably gives them a guarantee that it will not result in them getting kicked out the index, and probably set some sort of flag in their mysterious database to the effect that Googlebot will not lie about its user agent when spidering the site. Thus, I doubt they need to resort to techniques like Fantomaster's IP database to accomplish what they want, since Google already tipped their hats to this violation of their webmaster guidelines.

This is not meant to imply that I'm against cloaking. I'm pretty ambivalent, and I'll post cloaking-related topics on this blog. But if Google wants to apply its draconian policies on cloaking to me, they must also apply it to everyone else. Matt Cutts himself has called this problematic in his blog right here.

The blog says:

"Googlebot and other search engine bots can only crawl the free portions that non-subscribed users can access. So, make sure that the free section includes meaty content that offers value."

So much for Google arguing for net-neutrality. This policy is far from neutral. If Google wants to offer this sort of preferred treatment, it must allow others to apply for it. And I don't mean empty promises responded to with form letters. Sorry Google — this needs explanation.

Update: Interestingly enough, someone sent me a comment about my last post that wondered if a link to an excluded page counted at all. He asked me why I wouldn't 301 the bot to the non-excluded page using IP-delivery. To Google, this would be cloaking, but personally, I feel it should be OK. If it's OK for the New York Times to profit from cloaking, it should be fine for me to use it innocentlyto cure architecture woes .

"9 Wise Comments Banged Out Somewhere On The Internet ..."

gcritic

Tell me is this true…
google can list your website… without your permission…
but if you want google in your website you have to agree to their 100s of conditions….
google can take screen shot of your webpage….without your permission…
you cannot have even a google logo without their permission…
google can store (cache) your website content on their server… without your permission…
you need to have an exclusive permission if you want to play with any google stuff….
google can search, show, store the copyrighted images stored in your web pages without your permission…
they will not call you… but you have to beg them to remove…
google will confuse and redirect your website searchers by giving 10 competitives ads… and snatching your profit and business with your money…
even to put a google ad in your page they do not let your do place a competing ad…
Lastly though need a google's permission for anything related to google….. Google just do not need to ask you when they are going to let the google earth close right into your bathroom !!!

What makes me mad is the fact that google isn't responding to all of us asking it why it allows NY times to keep doing this. Basically it goes by website demand the DMW site wasn't anything since the main company website is still there, but a website like NY Times might affect google if users can't get any results from it. In the meanwhile if you really want to see that paid content on ny times yo ucan always get fitrefox and that extension.

[...] Jamie Sirovich tells the tale perfectly in his piece, The Google Cloaking Hypocrisy: There is no doubt about it. What the New York Times is doing, without special Google accommodations, or at least their complicity, is a black hat technique according to Google for everyone else. Other search engines are less quick to vilify cloaking, so long as it is not used to spam. I agree, but Google is in a pickle here. [...]

[...] SEO Egghead: Jaimie Sirovich points out Google's hypocracy in allowing The New York Times to actively engage in cloaking its content. While I certainly don't see anything wrong in what the Gray Lady is doing, Google definitely needs to clarify its policies and let us know when it is ok to do such things. [...]

[...] Matt Cutts, I know you hate cloaking. However, your company has been rather inconsistent with applying your disdain for it. I know why Google feels this way, but I have a few suggestions. [...]

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